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Post by bookboy007 on Feb 21, 2024 19:57:51 GMT
Thanks for writing out your opinion. Please excuse my "condescending" remark. It was connected to your use of "opinion" in each paragraph. My brother's birthday is coming up. I bought him some auchentoshan scotch and am looking for another scotch to go with it. Any recommendation is helpful. If not, good day. I'd excuse it if you weren't likely correct. Not that I mean to actually condescend to you, but it does tend to be my brand. And I mean, Danny, sure...
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Post by dannycater on Feb 21, 2024 20:26:48 GMT
Thanks for writing out your opinion. Please excuse my "condescending" remark. It was connected to your use of "opinion" in each paragraph. My brother's birthday is coming up. I bought him some auchentoshan scotch and am looking for another scotch to go with it. Any recommendation is helpful. If not, good day. I'd excuse it if you weren't likely correct. Not that I mean to actually condescend to you, but it does tend to be my brand. And I mean, Danny, sure... Why I resemble that remark.
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Post by bookboy007 on Feb 21, 2024 22:51:36 GMT
A few thoughts on Grizz and the correlating stats. I do agree with Book, that fans hating the Bruins 6th/7th best defensemen is a trend as old as time, and has always been a topic and going back to the BDC board. Nobody likes the 6th defensemen and every team has one. Every team has to fill that position, on the cheap, and hopes they can get away with it as much as possible. There have been so many negative threads about Kevan Miller and Matt Bartkowski and Mark Stuart and Andrew Alberts, etc. etc. Grizz has not been worse than our 6th/7th d-man options of the past, or worse than most other team's 6th/7th D-man. However, more and more, I am really disliking +/- ratings as a useful stat, and I think Grizz may be the poster boy for misleadingly good +/- totals. I think it's getting closer and closer to a garbage stat, without some serious context at least, because analytics and micromanaging of shifts impacts things so much now. I think it's useful to compare Grizz with Brandon Carlo, for example. Last year Grizz was +46 and Carlo was +44. Both impressive, and so close. But Carlo had 65% D-zone starts. Grizz had 41% D-zone starts. Carlo plays lots of shorthanded minutes (no minuses there, but lots of hard minutes in the D zone), Grizz plays none. Carlo gets paired against other teams top scoring lines as much as possible. Grizz doesn't. Carlo plays more minutes when the Bruins are trying to hold a lead, not trying to score. Grizz is the opposite -- he gets to attack with Marchand and Pasta when they're behind. Carlo plays defense when the other team desperately attacks at the end of games. The bottom line is that Carlo being +44 is staggeringly impressive. Grizz being +46 is less impressive. Fast forward to this year, and Grizz really does not look good, with all of that context behind the +/- totals. Grizz is no longer pacing Carlo, despite the advantages. The same scenarios apply, yet Grizz is +6 with 7 points. Carlo is +23 with 13 points. Despite every possible advantage on +/- and playing way more sheltered and offensive (no pun intended...) minutes, Grizz is looking unfavorable. He is having a bad season. Hope he turns it around. OK, sure. But I'd say two things that explain why I still think it has reasonable value in the absence of something better. One is that I think it's not significantly more contingent on context that other "advanced" data points. Players get zone starts based on their skill sets - both their strengths and their weaknesses. I think you could argue that when Carlo gets burned, it's more often on the rush, not on in zone coverage. I think you could also argue that historically (and kudos to Brandon for finding more in the cookie jar this year), Carlo is less likely to improve his +/- with an O zone start given that he has never shown much offensive flair. So starting Carlo in the O zone isn't likely to have positive consequences in terms of goals for/against, but it is more likely to create situations where he's less adept at defending that he is in his own zone. That's not to say his team leading (or close to) +/- isn't impressive for the reason's you've described, just that the stat used to put plus/minus in context also needs context. I'd say that about "exposure" to high calibre linemates and opponents. Like I said above, Bergeron and Marchand being 70 goals better than anyone over the last 13+ seasons despite often playing head to head against the league's best players is doubly impressive. But I'm willing to accept that context matters rather than toss all the stats that get inflected by usage decisions - we don't argue about Matthews' goal totals being a result of his zone starts. Two is that there is a clear need for a metric that does what we try to get plus/minus to do, and to borrow a quotation, I think plus/minus is the worst stat except for all the rest of them that try to measure a player's contributions outside of goals and assists. Or it's second worst; all the others are tied for first. I don't hear the same objections to "possession" metrics based on the number of shot for and shots against when a player is on the ice - what is "shot share" other than plus/minus at one further remove from meaning? How would we measure the value or meaning of zone starts without something like plus/minus? We could say player X being a 30 goal scorer is more impressive because he had more D zone starts than player Y who also scored 30, but usually didn't have to break the puck out first. But then you have to ask whether its actually not that bad to have a D zone start when you're on with Cale Makar and 16 of 30 came on odd man rushes that woudn't have happened if you'd started in the O zone. The goal of plus/minus is to try to account for all of the subtle ways players contribute to goals for and goals against beyond scoring or being one of the last three guys to touch the puck before it goes in. I think the Bruins have been the poster boys for the idea that goals are the result of team play even when they seem like solo forays and individual brilliance - everything from the toll that a 45 second cycle against Lucic and Horton takes on the legs of a D to the ability of a Marchand or Pastrnak to try some ridiculous circus move and turn the puck over only for Bergeron to get it back before it can even leave the zone. When the ridiculous circus move works, Bergeron probably doesn't get a point, but without him, the wingers are probably stapled to the bench for even trying it. On the other end, I really don't agree with the "not my fault" defense on goals against unless you want to track back the whole shift and demonstrate that at no time in that shift did you miss any assignment just enough to mean the next assignment was marginally more difficult, and that the reason the guy whose "fault" it ended up being was at fault was because he inherited the time and space disadvantage from earlier imperfect assignments. It's one of my favourite parts of hockey - that process of trying to work open the D, create and perpetuate an advantage until you have a clear high value chance. That "you could see it coming" moment. So I don't mind the imperfection of plus/minus because it's better than just counting goals and assists, subjective stats like hits, or trying to extrapolate meaning from shots and telling you something about what a player contributes on the ice. And with a player like Toby (that .gif of Michael Scott reacting to Toby coming back is the perfect analogue to the way people freak out about Grz), I think it's perfectly true to say that when you look at their roles and usage, Carlo's plus/minus is far more impressive. I would never suggest that you look at two players plus/minuses and if they're similar, assume the two players are relative equals. But I don't care how sheltered you are, or how often you start in the offensive zone vs. defensive zone or who you play with - I don't think any player as terrible as some consider Toby to be can be carried, coddled and sheltered to the point of being over +100. Not the way hockey works. Like a pride of lions, opposing coaches would do to him what the Blues did in 2019 night in and night out and he'd be minus whatever he was in those playoffs. Something ugly. But the only counter-argument seems to be that the stat is flawed. Which it is. But it's still more meaningful that the other "advanced" stats that purport to be more credble.
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Post by bookboy007 on Feb 22, 2024 3:18:38 GMT
The coda to that. Montgomery taking about Lohrei's game in Providence specifically points out his plus/minus.
I remember years ago some talking head saying that the Bruins put a lot of value on it. I thought that might have gone away but maybe not.
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